By the way, the above paragraph is packed with language patterns that do all sorts of things with your brain … now let’s just take one of the simpler patterns … and see if you can spot it. Try the first two words ‘well now’ – this saying has a double meaning. At a conscious level you might take the meaning a certain way … particularly when combined with the follow-on sentence (i.e. Well now, that was a longer break …). What happens t an unconscious level with the second meaning? “Well Now” can also be taken as a command … be well now. As in health.

Some don’t believe that this ambiguous language stuff works as a means of planting suggestions. Yet perhaps that is because the whole story has not been told. It’s not that ‘one phrase’ on its own will make a difference – its about using ambiguity as part of a larger game – in which multiple meanings are held open unconsciously and the one that of those meanings is reinforced consistently. The reinforcement may be done at a level that is not perceived consciously by the person on the receiving end of such an endeavor. And the unconscious meaning that is being reinforced does not have to bear any relation to the ‘meaning’ being communicated consciously.

Confused yet?  Ambiguity is a simple concept … its application as part of a bigger game is an art form in its own right! The bigger game takes time to master … and we can^t even begin to open that up here. Let’s just say that two separate conversations are occurring between two individuals when they are communicating … a conscious one and an unconscious one. This happens all the time. We are responding to and advertising unconsciously all the time. What happens when one can begin to ‘control’ what used to be their unconscious conversation with another individual? Is it even possible? You bet it is!

We’ll explore some of these concepts over some coming posts. In  the meantime — great to be back on-board … happy hypnotic wanderings in 2010.

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Some of the advertisements that you will see being plugged on twitter and other social media sites  promise all sorts of things. Let’s take a look some of the ‘tweets’ and the ‘promises’ that will be yours if you just buy that course or eBook:

• How to hypnotize someone to go to bed with you …
• Secretly hypnotize anyone …
• How to hypnotize girls …
• How to covertly mesmerize anyone …

I’m not going to comment on the validity or otherwise of the materials offered when you click on those links.

But just stop for a moment and ask yourself what the underlying motivation is that these ads are appealing to. In my opinion they are appealing to some form of desire to be able to coerce – period.

That’s a dangerous desire folks. Coercion is illegal in many countries. You can’t tell me that trying to get someone to do something that is against their will isn’t coercion. That’s the implication here if you think about it … if you can’t get you way through normal channels … well, just secretly hypnotise them. Hmmmm.

So, just a gentle warning about your motivations in learning how to hypnotise – be careful if you find these ads appealing, you are treading into an ethical and moral minefield. And let’s not forget the law – you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of that.

(There’s also a question about the validity of the claim of being able to secretly hypnotize anyone – some believe it is possible, some don’t … it’s all a matter of definition of what you believe hypnosis is).

Be careful out there!

The wandering hypnotist

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When something suddenly interrupts an automated unit of behavior a strange but interesting thing occurs. There is a pause – a blank 1 or 2 seconds – where the brain doesn’t know what to do. The conscious mind hasn’t fully engaged again and there is essentially a blank slate as far as a hypnotist is concerned. If you give a suggestion in that pause – it is more likely than not that the brain will act on the suggestion.

If you then carry on as if nothing has occurred then quite often the person will have total amnesia of that 2 second pause. So here is the 2 second hypnosis secret in order.

1. blah blah blah blah (normal conversation)
2. pattern interrupt (just something unexpected during an automatic habitual action)
3. suggestion – in a different tone of voice if possible (you got 1 or 2 seconds)
4. blah blah blah (carry on with you conversation in the same tonality and pace as before the interrupt

That’s it folks. There is more to it than this, but this is the core underlying principle things such as the ‘handshake interrupt’. I teach this stuff in seminars on influence to business groups. It works. I just had a lady give our group some feedback … she interrupted a kiss from her boyfriend just before their lips touched by turning her head away and whispering that she wanted some sunflowers (this boyfriend had only bought her flowers twice in the last 4 years). A few days later he turns up with sunflowers. She asked him if he had just done this because she said so … and he flatly denied it. He had no recollection of her saying anything to him.

So, I’ve let the cat amongst the pigeons here in exposing the sneaky little 2 second hypnotic session. Have fun. Don’t do anything silly with this – and remember you can’t get anyone to do anything that goes against their core principles (contrary to what a lot of hype out there is suggesting). And this takes practice to get right. Good luck on your journey in learning how to hypnotise.

Happy trips

The Wandering Hypnotist

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One way to set up rhythm in the beginning is simply using the pace of your voice. This can take a little practice and one way to experiment with this when you start to learn to hypnotise is to use a metronome (you can get a real one or use a software based one with earphones – I’ll post a blog on how to do this if you are interested at some point). Using a metronome and pacing your script delivery in-time with the beat can work wonders on the impact and effectiveness of your hypnosis induction technique.

It’s almost like poetry … and as you play with a metronome … do a little self-hypnosis and set-up your own internal metronome that you can gently turn on in the background as an internal rhythm generator for your hypnosis techniques.

I have a few other secrets but before getting to them, go away and play with rhythm. Even within this one area there are some really sneaky ways of introducing rhythm in your ” learn to hypnotise ” journey.

Happy journeys.

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Too many hypnotherapists out there have been trained that they need to relax their client as part of the hypnosis induction routine. There have been a number of discussions in the last couple of weeks in various online hypnosis forums from newbie hypnotherapists asking questions about clients ‘resisting’ their hypnosis induction. Further investigation suggests that ‘going deeper into trance’ is being resisted because the client fears ‘letting go’.

Now, the thing is you see, that hypnosis does not equate necessarily to a ‘relaxed’ state. If you’ve only been taught a set of hypnosis techniques that rely on ‘letting go’ then you are basically stuck as a hypnotherapist if you get someone who polarity responds to your hypnosis routine.

This is where the quality of the training you took really begins to shine through. If you’ve been given a set of techniques and not the principles then you are already in a less flexible situation as a therapist. If you’ve been taught the belief that you need to ‘relax’ the client to effect a hypnotic state then you are even less flexible.

Take care to learn principles and check out if you can the quality of the training you are getting if you are learning how to hypnotise for therapy purposes.

Happy trips

The Wandering Hypnotist

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Underlying most of the techniques you will be exposed to as you learn how to hypnotise is this simple yet complex hypnosis secret:

Grabbing and directing attention (whether conscious or unconscious attention) is THE secret behind every induction.

I can already hear some objections so let me share a couple of observations.

1. Most beginning hypnosis techniques are about gently guiding the conscious awareness on a little journey while you ‘establish communication’ with subconscious resources without the ‘critical judge’ of the conscious mind so much in-the-way. As you advance you might also be introduced to ‘rapid induction’ hypnosis techniques … there are plenty of twitter ads and search engine ads out there promoting those “how to hypnotize someone in 60 seconds” type of products and courses. In my opinion, these are still of this the ‘grab and direct’ conscious attention hypnosis techniques (I’ll give you a run-down on how these work at some point).
2. The other class of hypnosis techniques are about grabbing and directing the attention of the unconscious mind. These are a very different (and powerful) type of hypnotic induction. The conscious mind is secondary … you might not even care about directing the conscious mind … the conscious mind might not even know that the induction has already taken place, the suggestions made and the interaction complete. ‘Conversational hypnosis’ techniques are some of the ways in which you can begin to do this — BUT this is not the be-all or end-all of this class of hypnosis techniques. There are in my opinion much more powerful means of inducing hypnosis unconsciously than conversationally. But this is advanced stuff.

I went through the classic path of learning to hypnotize by going through the first class of techniques above, then the second class … and only realized some fundamental underlying secrets in the last few years. I’ve begun to talk about some of them in these posts … but not all has been revealed yet .

So, as you go forward and learn how to hypnotise keep an eye and ear out on whether you grabbing and directing the conscious mind or the unconscious mind … and as you develop more skill begin to figure out which is more effective generally for you.

Happy trips

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And then again, revealing this now may or may not have any impact whatsoever – at least not right away. But as you gain your hypnosis skills this one simple insight will transform your ability to work with a much wider group of people. There are layers to this secret. What you take away from it now will be different than what it means in 10 years time.

Are you ready?

The most powerful way to hypnotize someone is to go there first!

Richard Bandler repeats this point over and over (Richard is this amazing genius of human communication who co-invented NLP). I didn’t really understand it at first. However, now I do – and I am still staggered at the implications of this secret. But like any knowledge, I could give you the secret to the universe and it would be meaningless unless you claim it as your own – you need to go out and experience this information as directly experienced knowledge.

So what does it mean … you really need to go and test it to understand the implications … at its most basic level it means that if you can learn to ‘go into the right hypnotic state’ yourself, then it is much more likely that the person you are working with will ‘follow’ you.

When you stop and think about this it makes sense. When someone walks into the room who is really happy … everyone’s mood is lifted. If someone comes into the room all ‘doom & gloom’ … it impacts everyone. Same goes for excitement, laughter, anger … in fact any strong emotional state … that state ‘jumps’ from person to person. Hmmmmmm … does this work for other states … hypnotic states, meditative states, curious states?

I’ll leave you to ponder this hypnosis secret – and I’ll really encourage you to really go out and learn how to hypnotize yourself first … and then ‘play’ with the state in yourself and observe its impact on others.

Have a good trip …

The Wandering Hypnotist

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Now, I’m going to be permissive (hypnotically speaking) here and introduce a key linguistic setup for you to go away and play with. In learning how to hypnotise the permissive way the key is to offer choice at the same time as you build your authority in the persons mind.

That may sound complicated or a bit deep so let’s explore what I mean by way of an example.

“You may or may not be beginning to relax or you may not even be aware of just how relaxed you are right now”

A number of things are happening here with this sentence. I’m offering choice. I’m offering choice that covers every possibility. I’m not saying which possibility is the ‘correct’ one, but I’ve covered all bases. And because naturally the person being hypnotized will ‘identify’ with one of the possibilities, they will naturally build trust in me. I’ve demonstrated choice. Even if they weren’t aware of how relaxed they currently were (the 3rd possibility in the sentence above), they will be now as I’ve directed their attention to one of the other two possiblities.

(More importantly I’ve reflected back to them something that is already happening in their experience … and we’ll look at that in a future post).

So the take-away lesson here is that offering choice that covers all possibilities builds trust and authority in you as the ‘hypnotist’. This is what I mean by a permissive style of hypnosis.

When you learn how to hypnotize someone then it much easier to start with a permissive style like this. Try this in everyday conversation and see what sort of effect it has. And we’ll continue this exploration in a future post.

Have a good trip

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• Permissive style
• Authoritative style

The permissive style is the more usual style in therapeutic situations where the ‘client’ needs to feel like they are in control of the situation before they can begin to relax. Attending a hypnosis session for the first time can be a scary thing because of all the mythology that a person probably has about hypnosis.

The permissive style is about giving a person choice. For example, you might say to a person “You may or may not begin to notice that you’re breathing is beginning to relax”. That sounds like a simple sentence doesn’t it? But that simple sentence is stacked with enough hypnotic stuff to spend a whole afternoon explaining. But right now, I just want you to notice that you are offering choice – choice that the person may or may not notice. There is no threat here, no ‘I’m in control and you have no choice’ implication to the conscious mind of the client.

The authoritative style was common in the 1950’s and 1960’s and relied on the ‘aura’ and ‘mystique’ of the hypnotist. Stage hypnotists, some street hypnotists and even some hypnotherapists still use this style. It uses a much more direct authoritative command-like interaction, e.g. “you will notice how your eyes just want shut right now”.

The more congruent a hypnotist is in their ‘authoritative’ style (everything from tonality, dress, voice, style of language, body stance etc.) the more chance there is that the authoritative style has of working. It all reinforces in the mind of the person being hypnotized that the hypnotist is in charge here. The person believes their own myth that the hypnotist is ‘doing something’ that they have no control over – and that is exactly what happens. Of course, this is exactly what you want to leverage in certain situations where the ‘mystique’ needs to be maintained – e.g. a stage show.

So, as you begin to learn how to hypnotize someone, you may or may not begin to realize that there are different styles of hypnosis!!!!! (That was permissive by the way if you didn’t already get that )

An exercise for you in learning what is more ‘natural’ for you is to, in everyday life, is to ask someone you know to do something in a permissive manner (where you offer choice) and to also command it authoritatively.

e.g. “Could you go and buy a loaf of bread for me?” vs. “Buy a loaf of bread for me please” – an inane example perhaps, but the first is more permissive while the other is a command. Actually, they are really both commands, the first one only seems like there is more choice, but your relationship with the person and their sense of obligation is likely a ‘bind’ on them to obliging you anyway.

We’ll come back to some of those other hidden hypnotic secrets hidden in simple language in a future post in our learn to hypnotize series.

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It’s what the hypnosis techniques do that counts – not what they are.

I can’t emphasize this point enough. You can learn the best so-called hypnosis techniques out there and if you don’t understand what it is they do, what the intent behind them is … you will fall flat on your face one day. You’ll come across a situation that you have ‘no technique’ for. And you’ll be stuck.

However, if you know the intent of a particular step in a hypnosis technique … then you’ll be able to generate techniques on-the-fly if necessary (after a little practice), because you’ll know you are after a particular response or result.

If you take all these principles to heart, particularly this one, then I believe you are going to be far ahead of the typical hypnosis student. You’ll have the flexibility to adapt as you go because you’ll know it’s not the hypnosis technique that count but what lies behind the intent of the technique.

Have a good trip.

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